A Walled City And Our Twenty Minutes With The Leaning Tower And 20,000 Other Americans

A Snippet Of The Wall That Surrounds The Whole Of Lucca

Torre Guinigi

Side View Of The Duomo In Lucca

Alicia Keys' House

Kaylin Holding Up The Leaning Tower Of Pisa

When we arrived in the walled city of Lucca, we had zero clue as to the whereabouts of our lodging. As such, when we were introduced to the walls as we exited the train station, we weren’t sure if we were on the outside looking in or vice-versa. A quick trip to the tourist information office near the station straightened us out and we eventually got our act together. We visited the Duomo di San Martino, which was constructed starting in the 6th century. We also checked out the Torre Guinigi, which is the tower in the middle of town that is lined with trees along the top. Finally, we visited Piazza Anfiteatro, which is a giant circular piazza that actually played host to a fight between Apollo the Sun God and Hulk Hogan…okay, I made that up, but the piazza was neato.
As the population in the city is only 9,000, we figured it would be a nice relaxing evening, but boy were we wrong. We were in town for the Lucca Music Festival, which brings various performers to the city throughout the month of July, and just by a stroke of pure luck we were graced by the musical stylings of the one and only Alicia Keys. Those of you that know our musical tastes will attest to the fact that, well, ummm, we aren’t necessarily fans of hers, so we actually just went and got dinner during her performance. We were actually kind of bummed because we missed Chicago by a day and were ahead of Leonard Cohen by two days, but no tears were shed, as Lucca was everything we expected and a perfect one-night excursion.

Our next scheduled stop was Siena, but because we had to change trains in Pisa, it seemed fitting to take a couple hours to take a look at the old tower and its surroundings. We made it to the enclosed piazza to come face to face with what looked like Tomorrowland during the dead of summer, meaning a sea of sweaty Middle Americans surrounded us. After joining our sweaty friends in doing the cheesy “hold up the tower using super clever camera angles” trick we walked around the tower and the Pisa Duomo until heading for the bus. The bus was about 20 minutes late resulting in us missing the train we had hoped to catch to Siena, meaning we had to wait another hour which explains our 20-minutes of admiration turning into a couple hours in Pisa.

Mark and Kaylin